Greetings!
With the launch of the 2nd-generation Threadripper 2950X, we of course had to look at what would make a balanced PC with this 16-core beast!
Bandwidth throttling can negatively affect many professional and casual internet users.
Nothing is worse than sitting around enjoying your favorite TV show on Netflix in all its 4K glory and then, suddenly, you notice that the video quality has dropped, and the picture isn’t as sharp as it was a few moments ago. You go and check your internet speed and notice that, despite paying for a 100Mbps connection, you’re only getting 20Mbps download speed.
How is this happening, and what’s causing it?
I hope you did not miss nVidia’s conference yesterday! Lots of tech/game demos were shown, and lots and LOTS of fancy words (two hours worth) were used to tell us that nVidia is launching the new RTX series of cards. 
AMD are coming out swinging, and they’re out for Intel’s blood with the flagship Threadripper 2990WX! With a bonkers 32 cores and 64 threads, this is not a CPU for the casual gamer; it’s a workstation powerhouse, designed for when multi-core performance is king.
AMD launched two CPUs today. The first is the 2990WX, a gargantuan 32-core/64-thread CPU $1800 ubermonster that will give every Intel board-member nightmares for the next ~2 years. Yes, you read that right: Thirty-two cores! Barely 2 years ago, a quad-core was the standard, recommended CPU for most people, and this 2990WX behemoth does not double or triple or even quadruple that: It octuples it! Maybe “octuples” is not a proper verb, but this is not a proper launch either.
The second CPU is the 2950X, a more modest 16-cores/32-threads $900 affair, but make no mistake: That makes it on par with Intel’s best consumer CPU, for half the price. In fact, if you took the time to read the reviews linked below, you will find that most reviewers enjoyed the 2950X more than the 2990WX.
I cannot claim that DDR3 was my first RAM-love; DDR2 has that honour. Or shame, if you prefer. But DDR3 has a special place in my heart, for it was the only RAM that was available when I built my PC. It was also the only RAM available when Orion and I built our office. For about a decade, it was the only RAM for normal users.
In the big wide world of hard drives, SSDs, and fancy CPU tech, we felt it was about time to have a bit of a dive into data transfer rates so you know exactly what kind of speed and overall bandwidth you’re getting for your money!
For some months now, there have been no new releases from any major company. As such, the only updates we have for now are price/availability related.
This quick post on changes to the main chart was started many moons ago (after the Ryzen+ release)—and the chips themselves were added to the US version of the chart back then, too.
But in the interest of getting this announcement out sooner rather than later, there will be no flavour text. If you like Magic The Gathering, you are out of luck!